The Grand Prix d'Horlogerie de Genève handed its highest honour to independent watchmaker Rexhep Rexhepi at its 26th edition, held on 7 November 2026. His Chronograph Flyback received the Aiguille d'Or, the prize open to any watch entered in any category, according to Euronews.com. The Geneva-based, Swiss-Kosovan craftsman's win came at a ceremony where 84 watches and clocks competed across 14 categories.
The field spanned sports watches, calendar and astronomy pieces, jewellery models and mechanical exception entries. The Aiguille d'Or went to Rexhepi after last year's edition saw Breguet take the same award with its Classique Souscription 2025, a watch carrying a single hand.
Why it matters
The result places an independent maker at the front of an awards programme often described as the Oscars of watchmaking, ahead of the larger houses that dominate the luxury sector. Euronews.com reports that Rexhepi said he had long hoped to win the top honour, and he credited his team along with collectors around the world who follow his work. He also noted that taking the Aiguille d'Or from Breguet, the previous year's winner, carried particular weight for him.
Rexhepi's route into the trade was not through a family firm. According to Euronews.com, he started as an apprentice at Patek Philippe at the age of 15.
A chronograph built around a redesigned movement
The winning watch is a flyback chronograph whose proportions, as described by Euronews.com, demanded that the movement's architecture be reworked from the ground up. Its dial is finished in storm blue Grand Feu enamel, a treatment the report links to the look of older pocket-watch chronographs. The overall effect is described as clean and balanced rather than busy.
That emphasis on proportion and finish sits alongside the technical demands of a flyback function, which allows a running chronograph to be restarted with a single press instead of being stopped, reset and started again.
New categories replace gendered prizes
This year's competition introduced a structural change. The organisers dropped the long-standing Men's and Ladies' divisions and created technical categories in their place: Essential Watch and Complication Watch. The Essential group covers pieces showing hours, minutes and seconds alongside functions such as a date, power-reserve display, classic moon phases or a day/night indicator, and it permits digital or retrograde displays. The Complication group is reserved for watches marked by mechanical complexity and creative indications, including world time and dual time, and excludes entries that fit the Essential or Mechanical Exception definitions.
Other categories retained their own rules. Time Only is limited to analogue hours, minutes and seconds shown by two or three hands on a solid dial, with no other indications, complications or gemstones. Mechanical Exception covers special mechanisms such as striking or acoustic functions, unusual escapements, automata or belt-driven movements. Gemset entries may carry up to six carats of stones. Tourbillon and Chronograph each require the function named in the category, and Calendar and Astronomy requires at least one calendar or astronomical complication. One-of-a-kind pieces are not accepted in these categories.
The jury that decided the winners included watch collectors, watchmakers, journalists and auctioneers, according to Euronews.com.
A wide field, from Moscow to a ten-kilo clock
The shortlist reflected the breadth of contemporary horology. Euronews.com notes that nominees included a Moscow workshop competing against established Swiss names, a wearable representation of the solar system, and a clock weighing ten kilograms designed to wind a watch overnight.
Category winners reported in the source material include a Chopard piece made as a continuation of the original L.U.C 1860 to mark 30 years of the manufacturer's Fleurier facility, entered in Time Only. In Essential, a skeletonised reinterpretation of the Extra Plat was recognised for an approach built on lightness and transparency. A Complication entry carried a grand feu champlevé enamel dial set off-centre at two o'clock, a snailed barrel with a 36-hour power-reserve indicator, and an oversized 12.9 mm balance wheel running at 18,000 vibrations per hour. Blancpain took the Mechanical Exception category with what the report describes as its most complicated watch, developed over eight years, which lets the wearer switch between two melodies produced by a four-note, four-hammer striking mechanism. A Gemset prize went to a pocket watch carved from ornamental stone and hung from a twisted gold chain. In Tourbillon, the winning collection was designed to show the movement's mechanics on the dial side, while a Chronograph winner was noted for restraint and a mono-pusher coordinating three synchronised phases. A limited-edition pocket watch took the Calendar and Astronomy category by introducing a Universal Calendar mechanism.
The full roster of 20 winning watches was published by specialist outlets including Revolution Watch and Watchonista.
The awards follow a year in which independent makers have drawn growing attention from collectors, and the top prize now sits with one of them. The next edition of the GPHG will show whether the jury continues to favour small independent houses over the larger groups.
